Word: mask
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...face is a pliant mask of dismay and disdain. One never knows whether he regards his props-the microphone, the piano, the piano bench-as allies or enemies. Flailing away at Rachmaninoff, he skids clean off the piano bench, pulls out a neon-blue seat belt, fastens it with frosty dignity, and resumes his musical flight. He also keeps up a running gag with a treacherous watch that tells the day, month, year and altitude ("Today it is the 39th of February, 1216 B.C., and we are flying at an altitude of four feet below sea level...
...mouth, the twisted lips and the lines in the forehead leading down past the nose--express a sensitive adolescent's wild and frustrated response to a confusing world. But the eyes are open and alert, as if Beckmann is seeing himself apart from himself, viewing his face as a mask. He captures a vision of himself, not "through a glass darkly, but face to face, even as he is seen." Beckmann makes visible and concrete, his clusive identity, his inner self: "If you wish to get hold of the invisible, you must penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible...
ABSENCE OF A CELLO. This amusing farce breezes along on the proposition that the corporate image is a fright mask...
Choked by its clown's mask...
WILLIAM WALTON: FAçADE (Decca). At the 1923 London première of Façade, Edith Sitwell read her poems, with their witty musical accompaniment by her young friend Walton, into the mouth of a mask painted on the curtain hiding her from view. Public and critics alike pronounced the evening an outrage. But the musical "entertainment" has been revived again and again, currently in this recording by Actress Hermione Gingold and Countertenor Russell Oberlin, with Thomas Dunn conducting the small chamber ensemble. Unfortunately for them, Dame Edith herself, with Peter Pears, has performed the work for London...